Oakland Cattown Cafe

Thursday, January 28th, 2016

A friend from out of town (hi, Holly!) is visiting Oakland for a few weeks, which gave us the perfect excuse to visit somewhere I’ve been dying to go — the cat cafe! Oakland Cattown Cafe is associated with a shelter, so the money you pay to visit the cats is actually a tax-deductible donation to the shelter. Holly made our reservations online, so they were $10 each (it’s $5 if you drop in and they have space). There are a limited number of humans allowed to bug the cats each hour, so reserving ahead was totally worth it.

Also, this is mostly a photo review, so, enjoy the cats.

The first thing that greeted us was cat macarons!

We both tried the Earl Grey and Ginger Yuzu and they were both good, but Earl Grey won for me. Thanks to US health codes, they can’t serve you while you’re in with the cats, but you can take in food, as long as you don’t share with the cats, and your drinks have a lid. We both got tea & macarons, reviewed the rules, sanitized our hands, and headed in.

Let sleeping cats lie!

Once we got inside, most of the kitties were settling down for an afternoon nap, so we found seats (there’s tons of places to sit) and enjoyed our treats. Someone was coming to adopt one of the kitties, so the employees were busy with that instead of greeting us, but they did happily greet everyone else on the way in. We got there right at the hour, so as to spend the whole hour with the kitties, and were alone for the first while (employees aside).

Cushions for humans and trays for treats arrayed around the cat hammocks

This guy had just gotten out of a week of medical confinement (hurt ankle), and went around yelling for his ‘brother’ and waking everyone up.

Reunited, they immediately begin acting like brothers

After a while the lighter one got tired of his brother’s loud antics, and started tackling him every time. Even kitties know when to say stfu.

Cat butt o’clock!

There is a whole panorama of really cool Oakland-themed cat furniture in there, including this awesome Tribune building. The other two clocks are different, but obviously this one was my fave.

The quiet room, after the orange one woke everyone up

There’s also a “quiet room” where only 2 humans at a time get to go bug the cats in their cozy cubbies. The orange one was in there yelling, so we petted a few heads before everyone settled back in to resume their naps. Some of the cats snuggled up 3 to a cubby, and some were really not interested in any other company but their own.

Chooooooocolate

Overall, it was a really great hour. We didn’t play with the cats ourselves a lot, but some other people came in and broke out the toys, and enough cats were awake from the caterwauling to be entertaining. There’s huge windows to let in the sunlight, and the room is spacious, clean, and full of cats. I definitely recommend a visit to Oakland Cattown Cafe if you get the chance!

As a bonus, we walked back toward BART and ran across this awesome place, a hot chocolate cafe. The not-too-sweet treats we got there were the perfect follow-up to lunch!

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